Email chains threaded back through the shell companies to a single origin.

Cressida’s name appeared beside payments to three firms, and a sound went through her table like a held breath released.

And beneath it all, in the plain black type of a man who never imagined anyone would read his messages back to him, Rupert’s own words:

Once Cecilia’s proxy is neutralized, we control the board.

The room read it together.

Five hundred people, in silence, reading my husband’s plan to erase me.

Neutralized. That was the word he had chosen for me, in writing, to his mistress.

Not divorced, not bought out, not even removed.

Neutralized, the way you speak of a threat or a device — a thing to be defused and set aside.

I had read that message dozens of times in the months since I first pulled it from the servers, and it had stopped having the power to wound me somewhere around the tenth reading.